Polymath

by John Brunner

  “If this gets caught in bottom-weeds, or some beastie tries to cling to it, you haul on the cable sharply, that releases this spring catch—see?—and the blades spiral up the shaft.” He gave it an approving pat and placed it in the boat.

  “Cheffy, are you going with them, or shall I?”

  “I’ll go. You can make the next trip.” Cheffy swung his legs over the side of the boat. “Push us out a few yards, will you? And mind where you put your feet.”

  Lex scrambled lightly aboard and took the bow thwart “OK, Captain,” he called to Arbogast.

  But Arbogast was staring toward the sunken spaceship again, his hands hooked together in front of him, his knuckles bright white. He didn’t seem to have heard.

  “All set, Captain!” Aldric said sharply.

  Arbogast let his hands fall to his sides. He swallowed hard before speaking. “I… I changed my mind. I’m not going.”

  “What?” Aldric took a pace toward him. Cheffy, startled, paused in the act of setting the oars in the rowlocks. Only Lex, slewed around on his thwart so he could see the captain, gave a slow nod. He hadn’t been altogether unprepared for this.

  Arbogast bowed his head and walked off up the beach, his dragging feet leaving smeared marks. The dying horror pegged to the ground sensed his passage and hunched once more to try to strike at him.

  “Now just a moment!” Aldric said hotly, starting after him. “You can’t leave Lex to—”

  “Aldric!” Lex launched the name on the air like a dart. “Aldric, let him alone.”

  “The hell!” Aldric snapped. “Look—it was his idea he should go, wasn’t it? Are we to waste another hour finding a suit to fit me or Cheffy, have it tied up, go hunting for different boots? It took most of yesterday to find enough wearable kit!”

  “Keep your temper,” Lex said. “Think of it his way. How would you like to go see your old home wrecked and smashed, with alien creatures crawling in every corner?”

  “Did I suggest it? Did I?” Aldric wiped his face. “And—hell, talk about homes being wrecked and smashed!”

  “Calm down, Aldric,” Cheffy said. “Lex is right. At least we don’t have to see what’s become of our homes.” He spat over the side of the boat.

  Aldric drew a deep breath. “OK,” he said resignedly. “Let’s go hunt out a suit for me.”

  Lex hesitated, thinking wryly how just a few minutes ago he had rebuked Delvia for taking risks. But—he excused himself—a survey of the ship was essential before tomorrow’s assembly, when they were due to take stock of their resources. He said, “I can go down by myself.”

  “You’re crazy,” Aldric said. “Without a phone? When we don’t know half the species of sea-life around here? What it’s likely the rutting season for things as dangerous as that multilimbed horror Bendle had to nail down? You’re apt to wind up as stocknourishment for a clutch of eggs!”

  “I’ll keep my hatchet in my hand. Oh, get in the boat!” Lex was suddenly impatient. “We need to know what’s happened inside the ship!”

  And, as another argument struck him: “I did two dives last fall, damn it, and the captain hasn’t done one before. It’s quite likely safer for me on my own.”

  Aldric shrugged. “OK—but I don’t have to like it.”

  He bent to the stern, leaned his full weight against it, and pushed it free of the sand. It rocked violently as he lumped aboard. For a minute or so Cheffy fumbled with the oars, finding them hard to synchronize; then he abruptly got the hang of it and the boat began to move steadily over the calm water. On the beach Bendle’s team paused in their work to watch.

  Arbogast was plodding on without turning. Lex saw Delvia and Naline talking agitatedly, obviously about the captain; he hoped neither they or anyone else would run after him demanding explanations.

  Determinedly, he looked ahead toward the tarnished but still-gleaming spaceship. It was possible to see how the curve continued below the surface, but it would be some time before they were close enough to tell what part of the vessel was uppermost. As a mode of progress lowing a boat was apparently inferior even to walking.

  “It’s moved five hundred yards at least,” Aldric said from the stern. “Lex, how do you imagine it traveled so far?”

  “Rolled, I guess. Too heavy to have floated out.” Who could have predicted that on a moonless world—hence effectively a tideless one—no beach was stable? There were no meteorologists among their panicky handful of fugitives; in fact there were hardly any trained personnel, so that a dilettante like Cheffy and a hobbyist like Aldric had emerged as leaders where technical matters were concerned. He went on, “If I remember the old layout correctly, that whole stretch of ground where the ship rested must have been undermined. And we know the bottom shelves gently. As soon as it rolled enough for the locks to admit water, there was nothing to stop it sinking deep into the seabed. Must have been as fluid as a pumping-slurry with the currents.”

  “If only the locks hadn’t been open,” Cheffy said. “Remember the noise? Wind blowing across the opening, making the whole ship sing, as though it were playing the organ at its own funeral. I hope I never hear anything so eerie again.”

  Lex and Aldric were silent for a moment, remembering not only the noise—which they would carry in mind until they died—but other things. Arbogast losing his temper when he realized what the sound was, and attempting to reach the ship in a ninety-mile gale with waves breaking over the hull. And railing against the fool who’d left the locks open, until it was worked out he must have done it himself, because he had been trying to persuade everyone to shelter aboard during the winter instead of trusting themselves to ramshackle huts of planking and piled dirt.

  “Why did we pick this place, anyway?” Aldric grumbled.

  “Reckon we’d have done better on high ground?” Cheffy countered.

  “No. No, probably not. Lex, what do you suppose has become of the others? Think they lived through the winter?”

  “Maybe. Don’t see why not, in fact.”

  “I don’t see why,” Aldric put in. “They haven’t contacted us since the storms gave over, have they?”

  “They could simply have lost their antennas,” Lex said. “Remember, they did at least have the ship’s hull for shelter. A gale could hardly have made that roll.”

  “So I hear,” Cheffy said. “Like a squashed egg! And wasn’t Arbogast pleased? Thinking he’d put down badly until he saw what the other captain had done. What’s his name—the other captain, I mean?”

  “Gomes,” Lex supplied, “Yes, the ship was badly cracked.”

  “And,” Aldric said, “they’ll have had subzero temperatures much longer than us. They’re probably iced solid, half buried in snow—at least the salt spray off the sea kept that from happening to us. But there were chunks of ice in the river until two or three days ago.”

  “You don’t have to tell us,” Cheffy said. Trying to look over his shoulder, he lost control of the oars and had to fight to stay on his thwart. “Hah! I wan’t designed for traveling backward. How much farther?”

  “We’re past halfway,” Lex said.

  “I’ll row back to shore,” Aldric offered. “Who knows? The boat may be lighter on the return trip instead of heavier.”

  Something snapped at the port oar a second later, as though to underline the grimness of his humor. When the blade lifted again, it carried with it a writhing creature, wet-shiny pink in color, which had sunk its fangs in the wood of the blade.

  “Damned nuisance,” Cheffy said in a resigned voice. “Aldric, I told you these things ought to be made out of metal. Aluminum for choice. Hollow, too.”

  “When I get my electric furnaces rigged, I’ll let you know,” Aldric retorted. “Can you shake it off?”

  Cheffy shipped the starboard oar awkwardly, then put both hands to the other and flailed it around. The creature emitted a gush of yellow fluid that discolored the sea, but clung fast.

  “Turn the oar around,” Lex said, picking up his ha
tchet. With some difficulty Cheffy complied, and Lex knocked the beast flying. It had left puncture marks in the wood, deep as nailholes.

  “Having second thoughts about diving alone?” Aldric inquired.

  Lex shook his head. “Those teeth wouldn’t get through the suit fabric—though if there’s any strength in the jaws I could get a nasty pinch and a lasting bruise. But from the way it struck at the oar, I suspect that species preys on fishingbirds. Which reminds me!” He sat up straight, eyes searching the sky. “Where are they? This bay was full of them last fall!”

  “Perhaps they’re migrants,” Aldric offered. “We’ll probably see them back now the weather’s turned.”

  “Seen any landbirds?” Lex asked. “I saw a few yesterday.”

  “Me, I wouldn’t have noticed. Been too busy since the thaw. We can ask Bendle about that when we get back.” Aldric turned the tiller a little and peered past Cheffy.

  “Getting close now,” he reported. “Have the anchor ready, Lex.”

  “Right.” He picked it up carefully, avoiding the scythelike blades. That would certainly shock any bottom-prowler which tried to hang onto it. An unsuspected trap. Like the one which had sunk their starship.

  He hadn’t answered Aldric’s question—“Why did we pick the place?”—any more than Cheffy had. They’d chosen it because both sea and land teemed with life, offering a double range of potential foodstuffs; any ocean is a repository of salts, and if they couldn’t eat the native protoplasm or needed to supplement it, then simple processing of seawater would provide trace-elements for the diet-synthesizers; there was a rivermouth running back into a sheltered valley, and near fresh water was a logical site for a settlement; there were treelike growths, and wood was a material you could work with handtools…. Oh, the choice hadn’t been made lightly, and in almost every way it was a good one.

  Mark you, the way in which it hadn’t been good might conceivably prove disastrous.

  Now, in the clear water, he could see far down the curving side of the hull. At about the limit of vision there were soft darknesses and a motion not entirely due to the changing angle as the boat rocked. Lex shivered.

  I’m not cast in the right mold for a hero.

  Last summer, when they had improvised their underwater technique for the recovery of Bendle’s son, it had been easy. He hadn’t given a second thought to the obvious logic of the plan. Air, an impervious suit, boots that proved just right to keep the feet down, weights on a belt—and straight ahead with the job.

  But he’d had a lot of time for second thoughts during the winter.

  Still, this too was something that had to be done. “Stop rowing, Cheffy,” he said, pleased with the levelness of his voice. He cast the anchor overside; it sank, gleaming, as he paid out the cable. Mindful of the spring-release activating the knife-blades, he gave it only the gentlest of tugs to seat it, then knotted the cable to the bow-pin.

  “Here’s your belt,” Cheffy said. “Put it on while I hitch up your air.”

  “Right.”

  Belt. Boots, hatchet, handlight, net bag. He weighed about ten pounds short of neutral buoyancy; he would sink gently to the bottom. When he wanted to return, he would discard the belt and rise slowly, or open the valve on both air-tanks wide, filling the suit so full it would shoot to the surface like a bubble. Easy. Why was he sweating so much? Because of what he was now convinced he would find?

  “Air’s coupled,” Cheffy said.

  “Right—wish me tuck.” Lex set his helmet on his head and with a quick twist seated it against the sealing-ring. For better or worse, this was it.

  III

  Her eyes were red with lack of sleep, her voice was hoarse from addressing the dumb microphone, and her bead was swimming so that the words she spoke no longer teemed to mean anything.

  All of a sudden Ornelle reached the end of her endurance, She thrust the microphone away from her, put her arms on the cool smooth surface of the table, leaned her head on them, and began to sob. Like the tip of a cracked whip she had been jerked through a cycle of emotions for which she-was simply not fitted.

  She wished she was dead. Like the others.

  Once there had been a planet called Zarathustra; people said comfortably, “Zara.” There were two hundred and ninety million people who said it. Figures of ash rose in Ornelle’s mind, marched across a blazing desert that had been fertile ground. A burning child screamed. She had not seen that. To stay so long would have meant she also burned.

  Zarathustra had ended in such nightmare that—had it been a dream—those who dreamed it would have clawed themselves, threshed wildly about, tried to throw their bodies to the floor rather than slip back into sleep and see more horror. It had been incredible—the sun was yellow-white each day as always, round, usual. You didn’t see the change. But in the observatories someone said a word: nova. Someone else said: how long? The machines gave the answer.

  Soon.

  Then into the calm pleasant settled life chaos and terror reached like a scythe into grass. Go now, they said. No, not stopping to take anything. No, not to look for children or parents, not to find a lover or a friend. Now.

  And if you didn’t, they had no time to drag you. Go.

  White-faced officials. Spacemen moving like machines. Machines moving like men in panic, emptying the holds of cargo vessels on a spaceport in darkness. Useless goods being hurled aside, trucks and helicopters moving in with canned and dehydrated foods, medicines, bales of clothing. Diet-synthesizers being charged with trace-elements. All the time, everywhere, screaming, wailing, and sometimes a shout of savage anger begging a moment’s peace and silence. People shoveled like broken toys into the bellies of the shining ships.

  And then the light breaking under the horizon and the knowledge that on the dayside of Zarathustra heat like a torch was shriveling life away.

  Then those who had not acted for themselves or been passive like Ornelle, bewildered into letting action be performed for ‘them, felt the truth and came weeping and howling, naked from bed, clamoring like wolves for survival. But the ships were full; the ships were lifting into space.

  In the crowded holds there had been time to think of those who were left at home. There was a terrible oppressive darkness, not physical but in the mind. Later she heard of other ships with which contact had been made, overfilled, where the oxygen was inadequate and the refugees stifled, where the lance of sickness ran through hunger-weakened bodies. But in the ship where she was, there was just enough.

  Not much was learned of other ships, though. For some reason Ornelle didn’t understand, to get clear of the continuum distortions caused by the nova shifting fantastic masses of matter over giant distances at appalling speed, it was necessary to run ahead, under maximum hyper-photonic drive, in whatever direction they chanced to select.

  In fact: into unknown darkness.

  At the season when its sun exploded, Zarathustra had been on the side of its orbit farthest from Earth and most of the other human-inhabited worlds. It was a recently-opened planet—indeed, Ornelle’s own parents had been born on Earth and had emigrated when they were young. The idea of trying to beat back around the nova and approach a settled system had been considered, but it was impossible; their ship was a freighter, not one of the passenger expresses disposing of as much power as a small star.

  Then, pincered between the narrowing jaws of shrinking fuel reserves and the limits of the ship’s internal ecology, the only hope was to find a planet—any planet—with supportable gravity and adequate oxygen. One system in sixty had a planet where human beings could survive; about one in two hundred had a planet where they could live.

  At the end of their resources, they had touched down here to find summer ending. They had no time to determine whether this was a one-in-sixty or a one-in-two-hundred world. At first only the lashing scorn of the few who intended to survive at all costs had driven the majority to behave as though there were hope. They felt themselves not only isolated, but aband
oned, even condemned.

  The arrival of a second ship from Zarathustra, that landed on a high plateau inland, was like a new dawn. Abruptly life, not just temporary survival, seemed credible. While with sudden demonic energy the refugees worked to build a crude town of wood, sundried clay and scraps from the ship, a team made its way inland to the site of the other landing to ask news of friends or relations.

  There were none; the other ship was from a different continent on Zarathustra. Still, its mere presence was comforting; a radio link was organized on an agreed frequency and for the rest of the summer and the brief autumn they kept in touch.

  The vicious speed with which winter had slammed down had prevented a second expedition being dispatched to the plateau; moreover, weakened by carrying a huge burden of ice, their main antenna had collapsed in a gale months ago. But directly it had become possible to re-rig it, they had powered the radio again. Ornelle—to whom the presence of other human beings on this world signified something; she couldn’t have described it—had waited feverishly to learn how they had fared.

  When intermittent calls had been made for some days, most people were resigned to giving the others up for lost. But Ornelle had insisted on being allowed to continue, and since she had no specially valuable skills they had let her go on. Now she had spent three long days and most of three nights calling, calling, calling—and hearing nothing. She might have thought that the radio was unserviceable, but she could hear her own voice from a monitoring receiver across the room.

  This wasn’t life she had secured, then—so it appeared to her. It was mere illusion. The strange planet must already have killed half the intruders from space. It was only a matter of time before it ground the rest of them down.

  She had tried to convince herself that if her parents had been able to emigrate from Earth, she could live on this alien ground. But her parents had come to a place prepared for them. There were already fifty million people settled on Zarathustra. First one island, then a chain, had been sterilized and terraformed by experts, assessing the risk from native life-forms, whether they were useful, neutral, or dangerous. A complete new ecology had been designed to include domestic creatures, plants, even bacteria brought from Earth, and only after half a century’s careful organization were immigrants invited, with one of the fabulous human computers called “polymaths” to supervise and protect them.